


Company You Keep

by heartofthesunrise



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Where We Are Tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-31 22:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17857940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise
Summary: For the prompt "Things you said while under the stars, in the grass" on tumblr.





	Company You Keep

**Author's Note:**

> Rebloggable [here.](https://warpedtourniall.tumblr.com/post/178863954211/ziall-6-d)

There’s a breeze whipping in off the lake. Zayn had borrowed Niall’s hands to shelter the flame of his lighter as he lit his first cigarette, and it had thrilled him, huddling close under a street lamp and waiting for the flame to catch.

Niall hangs out with Zayn all the time. He knows this, can point to long conversations they’ve had, just the two of them, at truck stops or backstage or hanging around one of their flats during their time off. It’s just, this Zayn… This nighttime creature, something whip-thin and lovely and complicated, has always seemed to fall into somebody else’s domain. This Zayn ought to be hotboxing the bus with Louis or trading tattoos with Harry. What he’s doing instead, though, is staring out over a strip of airfield beside Niall in the middle of the night, watching the way the world seems to fall away beyond it, the sky and the lake are so dark.

Tour’s been massive. Niall can’t think too hard about it, can’t confront it directly, without some awful anxious twist happening inside him. They’re riding the edge of something bigger than they can comprehend, and if they’re not very careful, they’ll all go tumbling over the other side.

Beside him, Zayn touches the stub end of his cigarette to a fresh one to light it.

“Got plans for break?” Niall asks. They have a couple of weeks off between Chicago and Pasadena, and Niall’s flying out to Vegas for a pre-birthday bash, but Zayn’s not mentioned anything. By now he’d usually be non-stop texting with Perrie, arranging flights and all that.

“Not yet,” Zayn says. He tips his head towards a strip of grass bordering the sidewalk and makes a show of checking it over for twigs and dog shit and everything before spreading his jacket out and sitting down. Niall joins him, awkwardly trying to balance himself with his hands as he lowers himself down. His knee’s been fine, and all, but habits are hard to break.

There’s the gentle sound of Lakeshore Drive purled back behind them, midnight commuters and people going home after a Saturday night out, all of them hurtling along the perimeter of the lake. Here in the grass it’s amazingly still.

Niall lays back and stares up into the sky. He can feel Zayn laying down beside him, but opposite, so their shoulders are level but Zayn’s head is somewhere beside Niall’s bicep. He could bend his arm and stroke Zayn’s hair, where it’s getting long. He could keep his hands to himself.

Even bordering the dark expanse of the lake, the city lights are too bright to stargaze. Niall hunts around for a guidepost, a visible planet, the north star. Their patch of grass is between two flowering dogwoods, and the branches break the sky up into a mosaic of abstract shapes, shards of nighttime Niall can’t piece together. The breeze blows again and smoke from Zayn’s cigarette wafts into his field of vision.

“Missing Pez?” he asks. Liam’s still nursing a birthday hangover - it may as well fall to Niall to ask.

“Sometimes,” Zayn says. He lifts his hand to his mouth, drags on the cigarette. Niall watches him out of the corner of his eye.

Niall says “Oh” the same moment Zayn starts saying “Feels like -” and they both pause, laugh awkwardly, return to silence. Niall wants to know what Zayn was going to say, but the moment’s passed.

Zayn finishes his cigarette and pinches it out with a wet thumb and forefinger.

“Feels like I’m reading a book, sometimes,” he says. “Like I can pick it back up when I’m with her, and I can, like, love the story, and want to know what happens next, but also it’s like… It isn’t my real life, really.”

Niall doesn’t know what to say. He’s an author exclusively of flash fiction, in the relationship department. “I’m sorry,” he tries.

Zayn shrugs. “Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault. Pez, y’know, she’s… I think she knows.”

_Ring on her finger says otherwise,_  Niall thinks, but it seems mean to say it out loud. Maybe she does know. Maybe it’s Niall who’s out of the loop.

He wants to ask something else, keep the conversation going, but it all seems so private. Niall’s nosy but he’s not much good for a heart-to-heart.

“D’you want to come to Vegas with me?” he asks instead.

Zayn’s going to say no, and it’s not going to be anything personal, just, they’re very different people. Niall likes the way they make space for one another anyways. He likes that Zayn makes him quiet, calms him down. Draws out parts of him he’d buried because they tested poorly with fans, and all that. He’s also willing to admit that he’s always desperate for Zayn’s attention, even when he’s got it. It’s selfish, how he’d love for Zayn to come along with him, cut loose because Niall asked him to. He doesn’t need anything more than what he gets from Zayn, but he wants, oh, he wants…

“Okay,” Zayn says.

Niall holds his breath. There’s the rustle of grass and leaves beside him, and then Zayn is leaning up on one elbow, looking down at him, obscuring the night sky. He is improbably beautiful. A statistical outlier. Nobody ought to be allowed to look like this, not when they’re wrung out from sleeping poorly and working hard and running themselves into the ground in the endless grind of tour. His whole face, from his enormous eyes to his lovely mouth, is soft and affectionate, and it makes Niall want to hide his own face so Zayn doesn’t have to look at it.

Zayn bends his neck, and his hair falls into his face.

Niall could lean up and meet him halfway. He could lift a hand to brush Zayn’s hair back, extend the motion, curl his palm around the back of Zayn’s neck and pull him closer. There’s nobody out here but the two of them and the vast, endless expanse of the lake, no stars, even, to bear witness.

Niall swallows. He lifts his hand but it doesn’t make it up to Zayn’s sculpted cheekbone - it rises far enough to find the delicate shape of Zayn’s wrist and wrap around it. Zayn blinks down at him. He inclines his head.

And then they’re kissing.

It’s nothing, really. Niall’s hand goes tight around Zayn’s arm and before he makes himself let go, stay still, press his mouth against the corner of Zayn’s mouth. He doesn’t even want to turn his head, improve the angle, just in case he’s reading the situation wrong.

“Zayn, what are you doing,” Niall says against the side of Zayn’s face. He hates himself for it. He can’t even let himself have this, this meaningless half of a kiss that they could forget about by tomorrow.

Zayn sits all the way up and twists to look back towards the lake, the airfield. There’s a small plane taxiing to a hangar, the only movement visible in all this dark.

“I don’t know,” Zayn says, and he shrugs. “Sorry.”

_Don’t be._  “Okay.”  _Kiss me again._  “What about Perrie?”

Zayn shrugs again, and shakes the last cigarette out of his pack, the lucky one he’s stuck in upside down, been saving. He lights it, sheltering his lighter from the wind himself. They hadn’t even kissed enough for Niall to taste the smoke on his lips. They hadn’t done anything at all.

“Like I said. She knows.”

“Okay,” Niall says again.

They walk back to the buses when Zayn’s finished his cigarette, a careful eight inches of space between their swinging hands. Niall imagines reaching over and holding Zayn by the wrist again, or by the tips of his fingers. Zayn’s hands are always cold. Niall could press them to his own overheated wrists, his neck.

They’re lingering, Niall checking the time on his phone, Zayn fidgeting with the zip on his jacket.

“I kissed you because I wanted to,” Zayn says, not looking at Niall, not looking at anything in particular. “Just, like… Just so you know.”

Niall nods. “I, uh… Me too.”

Zayn glances at him. “Cool.”

“Cool.”

Zayn mounts the steps to the other bus, has his hand on the door handle. He turns. “Let me know what flight I should book,” he says. “For Vegas, like.”

Niall nods. “Right. I’ll text you.”

And then Zayn is gone, disappeared into the rectangle of light that appears when the door opens. Louis must still be awake. That’s good, for Zayn, probably.

The other bus is dark. Liam is sleeping with his mouth open, his breathing quiet but audible as Niall changes out of his jeans and climbs into bed. There’s a faint glow from behind the curtain to Harry’s bunk - he might still be up in there, fucking around on his phone, as distracted as Niall is. He could join him, put on a movie, something to take his mind off of everything.

Instead, Niall stretches out on his back and stares up at the dark ceiling of his bunk. He touches his lips with two fingers. He plays the moment over and over in his head - not the kiss, but after.  _I kissed you because I wanted to. I kissed you because I wanted you. I kissed you, I kissed you, I wanted to._


End file.
